One World Trade Center Stiff As Bloomberg’s Manhood

One World Trade Center became New York City’s tallest skyscraper Monday. It rises to 1,250 feet, although I haven’t measured it, but that’s what’s being reported, so it’s hard to say otherwise (but eyeballing it on the computer screen, the building looks like it couldn’t top 1,230.)

The proud mayor of NYC spread his billionaire’s smile upon the nation, on behalf of the city:

“The New York City skyline is, once again, stretching to new heights,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. “The latest progress at the World Trade Center is a testament to New Yorkers’ strength and resolve, and to our belief in a city that is always reaching upward. This building has been a labor of love for many, and I congratulate the men and women who have worked together to solve the challenges presented by this incredibly complex project. Today our city has a new tallest building, and a new sense of how bright our future is.” (source)

Many of us were expecting Bloomberg to compare the stiffened Freedom Tower to his own distinctly charming manhood, which also stretches to new heights beyond the city he governs. NYC is a city “always reaching upward”, and I think that was the main message of Occupy Wall Street, which disrupted the city when protesters brazenly overtook Zuccotti Park. Bloomberg and the rest of his billionaire friends keep spreading the wealth upward.

Indeed, they proved him right. Bloomberg’s NYPD thugs repeatedly beat peaceful protesters, and all the while the mayor complained about the protesters shutting down local businesses and hurting the city’s tourism. When the Batman movie project rolled into town and also shut down the streets and businesses alongside, the mayor championed the move.

Protesting double digit unemployment rates, unending overseas wars and massive civilian casualties, trillion-dollar banker bailouts, and unbelievable wealth disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country became an ugly, shameful presence in New York, and for the nation, but catering to the production of yet another thrilling hunk of entertainment that doesn’t deal with any of the real issues crippling our nation was, of course, a sign of prosperity and goodwill.

Watching our politicians swoon over this new tallest NYC building, and declaring it as some kind of victory for the American masses seems disingenuous and offensive. That building doesn’t address the civil liberties we’ve lost since the 9/11 attacks that cleared the first two towers in that location. The One World Trade Center doesn’t reconcile the fact that we’re dehumanized by the TSA every time we fly (and now, in Houston, the same process of random search and seizure is taking place on public buses).

That tower might look to Bloomberg as mighty and swollen as his own genitalia, but it doesn’t assuage the fact that we have the highest prison population of any industrialized nation. And that those prisoners are doing most of our simple manufacturing jobs for pennies an hour (yes, slave labor is alive and well in this country). And that tower doesn’t symbolize that our prisons are mostly privatized by people like Goldman Sachs (who helped sell you the financial meltdown, and capitalized on it the whole time), and they make money every time cops randomly search someone without cause or warrant, and find a small amount of marijuana on him, and throw him in prison for fifteen years. It’s all a business, folks, but we aren’t in on the deal.

Bloomberg may do a great job of pretending that brand new sparkling tall tower is for you and me, and that we should be just as proud of it as he is, but he’s full of shit. He’s got a billion dollars, and so do his friends. And the rest of us are in danger of losing our jobs, are suffering cutbacks in wages, and have lost or are losing our homes. And if you don’t like that, and you speak out about it, you’re seen as part of the problem. You’re a threat. You’re bad for business. You’re lazy.

Let’s not rally around NYC’s newest tower that acts as a stand-in for Bloomberg’s extended manhood. One World Trade Center is a beacon for billionaires. Most of those billionaires are like water rats, except they aren’t confined to junkyards and swampy marshes, they get to wear business suits and determine the course of your life through privatizing our nation and steeping us in unending debt. America has enough hillbillies to deal with legions of water rats, but unfortunately the peoples of this powerful nation are still bickering over black and white, and who’s homeless, poor, and of the middle class. We need to awake as one. A giant hopped up on diesel fuel and rage over being manipulated and exploited with condescending talk of dreams, prosperity, and hope for a bright future (“if only you work harder, you can rich too”).

Our future is paying back trillions to the war profiteers, the mega global banks, and to our transnational corporations that have taken our tax dollars and used them to send our jobs overseas or bet against us while we lose our homes and livelihoods.

When you’re looking at the new tower, remember it’s George Bush’s erection that allowed 9/11 to happen. It’s Barack Obama’s middle finger to the thousand Pakistanis killed by predator drones. It’s Dick Cheney’s new heart that pumps more life into his old scowl. It’s Donald Rumsfeld’s assessment of a million Iraqis killed in the US invasion: “Freedom isn’t tidy.” It’s Condeleeza Rice’s complicity in the malfeasant Iraq war. It’s General Electric’s zero taxes paid on $2 billion/year profit. It’s Clinton’s bombing of Iraq that nobody heard about because America was determining if he’d gotten his dick sucked.